What is a good satiety score (and how to increase yours)

Whether it be food, exercise, or anything, we often come unstuck when we take an ‘all or nothing’ approach.  But the reality is that more is not always better.  

This is the case with Hava’s satiety score.  

Rather than living at 100, if your goal is weight loss and improving your metabolic health, your goal should be to incrementally increase your score while eating foods and meals you enjoy and can sustain for the long term.  

This article will show you how to dial your Hava satiety score to suit your unique context and goals.

What is a ‘good’ satiety score?

When logging your food in the Hava app, you’ll notice some ‘guardrails’ on the satiety dial set at 30 and 70. As a general rule, you’re OK if you’re somewhere within this range.  

We estimate that the general population, who eats a large proportion of ultra-processed foods formulated to make us buy and eat more, is likely sitting at a satiety score of around 30.  Meanwhile, a middle-of-the-road score of around 50 is likely a good place for most people to maintain a healthy weight.

But, like everything, the right score for you depends on your context and goals. If you want to lose weight and improve your metabolic health, you’ll want to nudge up your satiety score. Meanwhile, if you’re already lean and super active, you may want to lower your score to help you get enough fuel to support your activity without losing weight. 

Why is a low satiety score bad?

The Hava app was designed to help people intelligently navigate their food environment.  

We all know that foods like donuts, chips, and cheesecake are hard to stop eating.  The combination of carbs and fat, with low protein, overdrives our dopamine circuits and drives us to eat more of them.   

As shown in the screenshot below, the Snickers bar has low protein and fiber with a high energy density and is highly hedonic. So if all you had to eat were Snickers bars, you would likely consume more energy than you need to and gain weight.  

But it’s not just junk food that receives a low satiety score. Even some popular low-carb meals and drinks, seen as healthy by some, have low satiety scores and won’t increase your satiety or aid in long-term fat loss.

Why a very high satiety score is not ideal?

To lose body fat and improve your metabolic health, you must find the right balance of nutrients (i.e., protein, minerals, and vitamins) vs energy.  

To make the process sustainable, you still need some energy. Meals like this Hulk Green Omelette, with a satiety score of 81, will boost your satiety score. However, with 71% protein, it has very little energy from fat and carbs. 

While protein is essential to preserve lean mass while losing weight, it’s a poor energy source. So, it’s likely that your body will still be craving some energy, and most people can’t sustain extreme hunger for long.  

Maintaining a very high satiety score (>70) might be effective for short-term, aggressive fat loss. But because you’re getting minimal energy from fat and carbs, you may still be hungry. We generally do not recommend going above 70 on average, especially not long term.

Unless you’re preparing for a body-building show in a few weeks, we suggest you don’t try to lose more than 1.0% of your body weight per week. This will ensure you minimize the loss of your precious lean mass (muscle) and keep hunger manageable. 

How to increase your satiety score?

The first step to increasing your satiety score is to track your regular food intake for a few days in the Hava app.  Trying to be ‘good’ when tracking your food is normal, but you’ll learn much more if you track how you usually eat.  

If your weight is stable during your initial baseline tracking, and you want to lose weight, you can work to nudge your satiety score higher. For example, if your initial satiety score is 40 and you’re not yet losing weight, you could aim for 45 next week. 

Review your current foods and meals 

Review daily foods in the Hava app and make a note of:

• Foods with the lowest satiety score – these are the ones that you want to decrease or eliminate.

• Foods with the highest satiety score – these are the foods you want to eat more regularly.

• The meal (e.g., breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks) has the lowest satiety score – you can improve that meal first.  

Review your progress

After a week of aiming for a higher score, review your progress.  You're doing great if you lose between 0.5 and 1.0% of weight per week. No need to change anything.  Keep up the great work.  

If you’re successfully hitting your target satiety score but not losing weight, you can level up your satiety target again next week. 

Find new foods 

Tweaking your current foods is always the best place to start, but you can level up your satiety game by experimenting with new foods. Plan your next shopping expedition using the Hava app (or the free satiety search tool), or check out the high-satiety foods and recipes.  

Your personalized high-satiety foods and meals 

If you want to get serious, you can create a personalized shortlist of regular foods and recipes, including their satiety scores. Aim to keep this list under 30 items. Doing so makes it easier to keep track of what you need. 

When shopping, you can quickly search a food's satiety score before putting it in your cart and taking it home.  

When you find a new food or meal you love, you’ll also need to eliminate a food or meal with a lower satiety score from your personalized shortlist. Many have found this shortlist of foods and meals invaluable to help them plan their meals and shopping lists to ensure they continue to move toward their goal.

Transition to maintenance 

Once you reach your goal weight, you can reverse the process.  

Let’s say you ended up with a satiety score of 60. Once you reach your desired body composition, waist measurement, body fat, or weight, you could target a satiety score of 55.  

If you keep losing weight, you could dial that back to 50 and adjust your target satiety score to ensure you continue to maintain your new healthy weight. 

Conclusion

Increasing your satiety score is not a matter of all-or-nothing extremes that often lead to failure.  

Instead, it’s a process of gamifying your nutrition and progressively leveling up your satiety game to find the right satiety score for you.  

As you stay curious on your adventure and continue to practice, you’ll learn a lot about the foods and meals helping you while decreasing those holding you back from achieving your goals.